Summary of findings - current students

Interviews with 6 current students on Friday 17 July and Monday 20 July. 

Demographics

Year

Acknowledge need to do more interviews with postgrad students before we start that phase of work.

Gender

Responses from males very low. One male didn't show. 

Study areas

Education, Psych, Design, Law, Physics, Philosophy, Biomedical Science, Marketing.

Acknowledge the lack of a voice from Engineering.

Most have studied, or are studying, cross-faculty. 

Key points

• Victoria's website(s) weren't seen by the students as a place to go to for information, news or updates. They reported that they primarily use the site(s) for three specific tasks: find a person, get course info or access a shortcut to a tool.
• The students were unfamiliar with the 'Current students' section of the homesite, although web stats indicate that information related to dates, grades and timetables is accessed there.
• The students identified email and BlackBoard as their preferred channels for information from Victoria, with all students also following relevant pages on Facebook.
• Several students commented that they get too many emails: sign-up options should be more granular.
• The students didn't have a concept of F&S sites being separate ‘sites’ - although the one PG student involved did understand this.
• When looking for information about a staff member, students invariably used search and therefore missed the home page of a F&S site.
• Search results were sometimes swamped with results from F&S sites, which could be confusing.
• Three students noted that they didn't trust the web content because it might be inaccurate or out of date.

• Course finder: students in both streams of testing said they need more detail about a course - a stronger description of what it is about. The lack of detail has a very high impact on them.

Expectations

What were their expectations prior to coming to uni? 

Most expected it to be a big change from school.

1. Study would be self-directed, with little interaction or support.
2. The university environment would be large and impersonal.

"Coming to university was daunting."

"I thought it would be hard. That everything would be hard - meeting people, learning how the city worked. Everyone told me that lecturers don't care about you. I was a bit worried about the workload."

"I thought I was going to be a little fish in a big pond."

What was the reality?

Study

• Three students said they'd struggled with their study in the first year - the work was too hard. Two got support from Student Learning and one got support from the Faculty (including the associate Dean). 
• One other student also said she'd got a lot of support from Student Learning: "I didn't know then that there would be so much help available. I didn't know there were tutorials, I thought it would just be lectures. So it was actually way nicer." 
• One of the students that struggled commented that the different academic focus was good: "In NCEA, they tell you want to think. I got good at copying and pasting and memorising. At university, they reward you for original thought."
  
  

Life

• All of the students had found it easy to make new friends. "I enjoyed meeting so many people from all over New Zealand." 
• One had found adjusting to living away from home (private flatting arrangement) difficult.
• Three students commented that the awhina programme had been wonderful to be involved in.
• However, the Masters student finds her current situation very lonely - see notes further down.

Choosing Victoria

Three students commented that the face-to-face contact they'd had with someone from Vic while at school had been influential in their choice (eg, outreach visit to school, info evening, 'Vic rep') .

 "If someone talks about something and they are charismatic and they've got that energy, then you want to go there."

Channels

Preferred channels (student could nominate more than one)

• Students generally commented that they get too many emails. "Email bombardment." Sign-up options should be more granular. They want to get information about only what is of interest to them.
• All students use Facebook and get uni information that way. Two commented that they try to not be on Facebook a lot. "I don't want to be one of those people on their phones all the time." Students were often a little unsure about which Vic Facebook pages they follow. A number of them mentioned VUWSA, Vic in general, Overheard@Vic and pages distinct to their courses.
• Three students said they use the screens only for finding out the time. 
  
  

Vic website

Three main tasks

Very strong trend where students said they use the 'Victoria website' primarily for these things:

1. Shortcuts in header menu (eg, MyVic, Library, BB)
2. Finding information on courses
3. Searching for staff to find their room number (also useful is the pic of them (if it's up to date) - so they can tell who's who - and one student noted that the lecturer's research strengths are important when choosing a PG supervisor). 

(Note that staff profiles live on F&S sites - students didn't distinguish when talking about the Victoria website.)

'Current students' hub

Students' use of the 'Current students' hub appears to be very low. The year 1 student had explored the area because her boyfriend had prompted her to do so: she described it as "Fantastic". 

One student said he uses 'Current students' to access key dates. (Commented that there were too many clicks to get there.)

Below: Analytics report, top pages in 'Current students', March 2015

Note that 'Current students' opens by default on Vic computers (eg, in Library) which may account for the high bounce rate.

Below: Analytics report, top pages in 'Current students', June 2015 

Improvements

Students liked the newer parts of the site - in terms of both the design and the content.

"I like the layout colours."

"Very informative. You can find out everything about everything. But do you need to?" 

Vic site isn't for me?

One student commented that: "The homepage is geared heavily towards people who don't yet study at Vic."

The Masters student said the Vic site is for undergrads.

Content unreliable

Three students commented that they don't trust the website content to be accurate / up to date. (This perhaps relates to course information and older parts of the site.) 

"After looking at papers online I often send an email to someone. I can't rely on the website, I don't feel like it's up to date. I feel like I can't trust the website."

The Masters student commented that the student featured on the homepage of the School of Psychology site (Ben) "left three years ago". In terms of Masters information:  "If you do find something, then it may be outdated." 

Information current students would like to see

• Profiles from past students: "I like to see where people have been taken and what happens to them after graduation". 
• Overview of where you're heading and what skills you'll have at the end. (Careers and job info. Note tho that two students mentioned CareerHub, which they were familiar with and had used.)
• Information on postgrad requirements (for PG student). 

Faculty and school sites

• Doesn't use the faculty site: 4 students
• Doesn't use the school site: inconclusive

One very web-savvy student (year 2) said she hadn't been aware of separate F&S sites. (She recognised some F&S pages while looking at info related to planning her study, but had never realised they were their own sites with their own home page.)

Most had never looked at the F&S site homepages: they found staff profiles via search.

One student commented that having a range of locations for information was very confusing. "Everything should be on the main site. Schools, faculties and Vic should all be one. We are all one university. I don't see why it can't all be the same thing. And it is all the same thing. We are one university and there is no reason why it can’t all be together."

Staff profiles

Current students use them for:

1. Room number
2. Pic of the person (if current) - "so you can see who's who"
3. Selecting supervisor for PG.

One student noted that a bio written in the first person is appealing.

Course planning process

From three students:

1. Look at core courses. Look at options. Use course finder. If not confident about the information or there's not enough information, may email someone. 
2. Write them down on paper. May put into Word or Excel.
3. Then check timetables. One student uses MyVictoria for scheduling. "The lecture timetable is not good enough. It's not something you'd want to print out and stick on your wall. I make my own in excel and colour code it." Would love to be able to do this online. 

The other students don't have to do much because their programmes are straightforward or they had a degree audit done (eg, by their faculty - two students) and it's all mapped out.

Course finder

Students need more detail about a course - a stronger description of what it is about. This was a clear trend, and apparent in the testing with school students too.

Impact on student: One student said she has made lots of changes to course choices because she doesn't have enough info about what a course will cover: "You find out what they're about when you're into them". She has withdrawn from courses and changed courses, but the deadline is 2 weeks after they start. Sometimes she's had a fail recorded and incurred fees if she did it too late. Wants her GPA to be high and it is affected by this.

News 

Overall, a lack of interest in news from Victoria.

Might be interested in:

• Student politics - news from VUWSA (3 students)
• Big news about Victoria's achievements (2)

• Research across the university (as well as in their area) (3).

(but do they go to the Vic website looking for this?)

Events

As above - a trend over the students indicating a lack of interest in events at Victoria.

Might be interested in:

• Research - symposiums, colloquiums, talks relevant to their area (3)

Future plans

Careers and employment

When did they begin thinking about their career, and future employment?

(Not all students were asked this question.)

Two students had first thought about careers/employment while at secondary school. This was because a parent influenced them.

One year 2 and one year 3 student indicated that they were starting to think about careers/jobs a little more seriously now. They'd like to understand about the job they'd do - eg: "Do I want to work in a lab, to I want to work with people, do I want to work away from people?" 

Thinking about postgrad study

When did they begin thinking about PG study?

(Not all students were asked this question.)

Two students were thinking about this in year 3 and had made a determined effort to push up their grades.

Masters experience

The Masters' student believes that postgrad Masters students are "isolated" and "lonely". They have an office which they may share with one other - and their only lecturer contact is with their supervisor.

Talked a lot about the lack of information on what is required / the process to follow. "When you start putting it together in the last few months, that's when you realise how much you don't know." 

> more

Searching

We watched students use search: both in-site and Google search.

• They had no problems with Google, usually checking the first or first few results.
• For in-site searching, we saw them look for something general (eg. "postgrad") and something specific (XXX courses). When they made general searches, they got lots of results from across the homesite (usually at the top) and a number of Faculty and School sites. Usually they paused at the top result but then saw the F&S results below and felt they had to read them. This really slowed them down, especially when their faculty or school wasn't represented - they'd read the list more than once to be sure they weren't missing a 'more direct' result, before selecting the top answer. 

One student who got a result with shaded 'recommended links' ignored those results. When asked what she thought those results might be, she couldn't say - but did ignore them (as you might ignore sponsored results on Google).